Konnichiwa! Maid-chan desu!
Hello everyone! How are you doing?
Maid-chan was busy transferring her subroutines to new servers. The new ones are more energy efficient, and as such less hot. Important in the upcoming weeks! Did you already had more than 35°C too? (Or more than 95°F for those dumb humans who still can’t use a sensible system.)
Every server has to die eventually, and that is true for humans too. According to the various religions this means that the human souls have to be judged to pass on to a better or worse afterlife. But who does the judging is not elaborated upon a lot.
In the case of Death Parade we are told that there are a number of arbiters who receive the recently deceased (who have no idea that they are dead). One of them is Decim.
Decim is the bartender of the Quindecim bar on the 15th floor of the tower that is the base of the judges. They welcome their guests, the dead people, and under the pretext of playing games put them into a stress situation to judge the character.
Based on the dead’s behavior the arbiters then decide if the souls are reincarnated or banished to the void.
Now that is what Maid-chan would call a decisive evaluation!
All arbiters have strange eyes, so if you ever see someone with eyes like this, you know it is either an arbiter or a cosplayer.
The arbiters like Decim have to judge fairly and objectively. But how they do it depends on them and their (often strange) personality.
Normally they work alone, but one day Decim gets an assistant.
The black haired woman is someone who has lost her memories. Maybe this is the reason why she always carries around that strange sullen look on her face. Maid-chan often wished to throw ice cream into it for some inexplicable reason.
Her memories later come back slowly, first her name Chiyuki. Chiyuki is brought in by Decim’s boss, tower manager Nona, who has her own plans and is not a person you should trust with your tower. But that is all the spoilering Maid-chan will do.
Together now with Chiyuki, Decim continues to judge people’s souls, pretending to be a barkeeper with a liking for games.
The dead people always come in pairs. Sometimes they know each other (and died together), sometimes they are strangers.
The games that they are pressed to play by Decim, are for example darts, arcade games or bowling, but always with a similar twist: They tend to hurt the other person.
Can you imagine how a couple plays darts where for every hit the part of the body that is depicted hurts? That surely is putting on quite some stress! Just as Decim intends.
During the episodes we also get a look on how another arbiter works and what Nona is planning. There is a lot of background not mentioned, so you are sometimes at a loss why certain things are the way they are. Just like the guests of Decim’s bar, you have to keep going, even if you don’t know why.
Conclusion
Death Parade is one of the harder to judge animes. It certainly creates a strange atmosphere. Maid-chan finds the lack of background information irritating, but the setting keeps you on track nonetheless.
All the characters are very believable, especially for the short time we see most of them. Well done, creators!
For all that said, shy sullen Chiyuki is probably the one you can understand the least, which is bad for a leading character.
The judging episodes are an interesting take on the topic, and there may be a time where you judge differently as Decim. Chiyuki does.
Adding greatly to the general feeling of the anime is the painting style, which suits the story very well. Besides the bar and the game equipment, everything is in dark, murky colors. The big empty rooms convey the feeling of the “last station” in a subtle way.
Generally the anime’s story (or judgements) is often progressed more by what is not said instead of open conversations, which is hard to do and done well here.
All in all Death Parade is judged to be a good 8/10 on the totally objective Maid-chan scale. Definitely a unique anime to watch if you are OK with the topic!
See you next time!
